From his teacher's point of view, Christopher Nygren's behavior merited a stay in the school's timeout room.
Once inside the 5-by-6-foot room, Christopher, a special-education student whose disabilities include extreme sensitivity to noise, rammed his body against the steel-reinforced door and banged his head on the cement-block walls, pleading to get out.
His mother says she later saw the dashes on a piece of paper where the school staff member observing Christopher marked each harmful act.
Christopher's parents have brought a lawsuit against the Minneapolis school system, and complaints from other parents, too, are bringing new attention to the use of "timeout" rooms in Minnesota. State officials have proposed new regulations to limit the amount of time students can be placed in such rooms and to bar school officials from locking the doors.
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